Exodus
by survivor275
Summary: A ship captain is sent to defend Sol after it is put in danger by a delayed strike from a dead empire
1. Chapter 1

This Story is Rated M for Language, Violence, and suggestive themes. You have been notified, read at your own risk.

I do not own Fallout, Mass Effect, Rage, or any of the characters from said sources.

This isn't really what you would expect from a fallout sorry but please give it a chance

Exodus 1

I looked through the port side cameras upon the exodus fleet, the largest and greatest fleet ever assembled across the three galaxies. The fleet was made up of thousands of ships, ranging from fighter-drones barely three meters long, all the way up to the dreadnought class HCV, or Heavy Combat Vessel, at almost 15,000 meters long. These dreadnoughts were in short supply though, with only 19 remaining compared to the 200 the fleet set off with all those years ago. While I watched the fleet and reminisced, I received a hail from the command ship for my battlegroup. "Cruiser-Captain, You have a new assignment."

"Order reassignment acknowledged Line Commander," I replied, my voice steady as always. I had never been contacted by anyone higher than a Destroyer-Commander before and I was nervous about the assignment I was about to be assigned. If the Battlegroup commander was contacting me directly then it must be important. But I was ready for the chance to serve the fleet, they may reward me with a new shield system, the one I had was acting up lately and my quick repairs only had it up to 80% strength.

"You are to take one light frigate, two corvettes, and 3 light freighters to the nearest planet and arrange for the purchase of any local mapping units, reactor fuel, and all the thaocine you can aquire." I was being put in charge of a resupply mission, second only to combat patrol or the honor guard in level of importance. The honor guard protected to genesis class ships, the core of the fleet. These ships held the last colonists of Lestea, the origin of the fleet.

Nobody in the fleet really knew where Lestea was, only that it had been destroyed 2,586 standard years ago, due to a great war that left half the galaxy in ruins. The last and best of the Lesteans volunteered to be put into stasis until the fleet found a new location that could be safely colonized.

I contacted the closest jumpship and was given an approach vector with docking instructions. The jumpships were like a large railgun. The ship has three rails that are 18,000 meters long, making them the largest vessels in the fleet. These rails used large gravity generators to generate the warp. The warp is a field of hypergravity that catapults ships the incredible speeds, surpassing the fastest known objects in the galaxies at nearly 90 million times the speed of light. while this is sped up for smaller ships, as they have less inertia, most ships are transported at that speed, as it is the safest.

The fastest recorded jump was of a two-man testing ship manned by the Lesteans when they first discovered the technology and did not know the correct energy requirements, so they poured everything they had into it. The small craft reached 1.4 billion times the speed of light. The ship was found drifting 300 years later drifting, it had been torn apart and the only remaining piece was the engine module and some debris.

I docked with the jumpship, preparing for warp. The corvettes and frigate would follow me and set up a perimeter while the cargo hauler came after. The hauler contained a temporary jump platform, it could only be used a few times before overload caused critical reactor malfunction, destroying it. The reactor failure would also destroy anything within a light-second and a half.

The familiar feeling of warp washed over me. It was like feeling your body compressed and pulled apart at the same time, the internal gravity fields protecting me from the immense forces of hypergravity. I had always been better at dealing with the warp, many who I spoke to had commented that they hated using it. I never could understand why, I always felt most at peace while in warp, where there was nothing that I had to manage other than the gravity generators and a book. I particularly enjoyed entertainment from the 19th to 21st century of a planet called 'Earth', the plots were much more interesting than anything produced after the 32nd century on Lestea, when the fleet set out on its endless voyage.


	2. Chapter 2

This Story is Rated M for Language, Violence, and suggestive themes. You have been notified, read at your own risk.

I do not own Fallout, Mass Effect, Rage, or any of the characters from said sources.

Exodus 2

I noticed the timer to the end of warp was fast approaching. I Prepared the weapon systems to begin scanning once the warp field dissolved. The railguns would come online, followed shortly by the plasma projectors and then the main railguns. The mains were spinal railguns that ran the length of the hull. Even with a direct feed from the reactor, they would take time to charge. I was informed of imminent warp dissipation and readied myself as much as I could. The shields were still not fully charged and I was a little nervous about that, but the fleet needed materials and this planet reportedly had some.

I saw the warp field collapsed completely and I looked upon the large brown and blue sphere in front of me and thought that it looked very similar to Lestea would have, all those years ago. The main difference was, this planet had continuous meteor storms because it crossed over into the system's asteroid belt every two months. This made it unsuitable for colonization, but high in material. I powered up the main drive to get a closer look, as the cameras could only zoom in so much from this distance. The sensors read no energy signatures in the system except for some stronger than average magnetic fields around the planet and a large amount of radiation.

I ran a more intense sensor sweep of the planet to determine the most likely location for resources. The equator and northern hemisphere read as the most promising site for mining. The planets atmosphere and radiation patterns showed that this world likely was irradiated by a nuclear exchange. I contacted the corvettes and transmitted orbital entry coordinates. They had been sweeping for hostiles with the frigate. The frigate would stay behind and guard the hauler while the corvettes and I would go ahead and secure the planet.

I hailed the corvettes again "Do either of you guys read anything?" I asked, my screen was clear except for that the high level of radiation.

"Nothing here, I think the planet is clear." The recon corvette answered. I took his word for it because recon corvettes came with the most powerful and most advanced sensor packages in the fleet. If a recon corvette couldn't detect it then nothing could. The hauler arrived in the characteristic bright flash of a decaying warp field, and I determined that there were no imminent threats in the area to be worried about.

While I burned for orbit I contacted the freighter. I was given a progress report that confirmed we were running on planet had few things in orbit, two moons and a small amount of naturally occuring debris. I had a bad feeling, but no evidence, so reporting in would make me look like an idiot. As I decelerated into an orbital entry trajectory i saw something strange. There appeared to be a small installation on the surface, the sensors only flagged it because of the massive energy reading coming from it. The facility must have been shielded from far away, only being detectable when you come near.

As if the facility could see me, it began to move. It was not a stationary building like I initially thought. It was some sort of vehicle. I only saw energy readings, no mass signatures.

"Cruiser captain!" I heard the corvette call over the comms. "What, is that?" A sudden feeling of dread fell over me and I'd like to think the frigate and corvettes too but i'm not sure if they lived long enough to notice. The mysterious energy signature rose from the surface at blinding speed. First it slammed into the transport, the entire ship atomizing instantly, the only things remaining were the computer core and the reactor for the portable jumpship. The corvettes similarly followed, being destroyed all except for the reactor and the computer core.

The frigate was spared no such pleasantries, for some reason this entity decided to just cause an instant supercritical reaction inside the engineering section of the ship. Something like that would have normally been stopped by failsafes in the reactor and should have taken almost a quarter of an hour but this entity made it happen in under a second. The shockwave threw everything in its vicinity outwards, including me, and the computer core for the other ships. I was pushed towards the planet, nearly into the atmosphere, but I fired the emergency thrusters and stopped the descent.

My entire task force destroyed before i could even gain a target lock, not that it would matter. I prepared myself for my oncoming demise. The cameras facing where the entity was were knocked out by the explosion. After a couple of seconds I was beginning to wonder why it had stopped after destroying the frigate. Something with that much power couldn't have been damaged like that. I was confused so I launched a remote probe I had prepared for the planet and accessed its cameras, what I saw was anything but what I had expected. Instead of a massive cloud of lightning like what destroyed the rest of my fleet I saw what looked like a standard Lestean, about 7 feet tall, built heavily and with tanned skin. He looked to have brown hair, a rarity among Lesteans. This man was floating in front of what looked like a tear in space. The interior of what I will be calling the rift from now on, was a bright golden color. The man looked at me, or rather the probe's camera.

His eyes mirrored the golden color of the rift. He made a motion and I felt movement towards him, the probe immediately flew towards him with computer cores knocked loose from the explosion. The mass of the Everest class Heavy cruiser was large, causing acceleration to be slow. I tried to rotate the ship and point the main thrusters at the man to try and break free. But all the maneuvering thrusters and gyroscopes were all having no effect except using power. And from the look of this I might need to conserve that power, so I shut down all non-essential systems and just floated towards the man. Like an insect floating down a river. No way to stop it, so I just need to ride it out.

An hour had gone by, the rift was far away and I wasn't moving very fast. Tis was it, the man had long ago moved off with only a ominous burst of static over the comms accompanying his departure. The first of the fighters I had sent out to collect the computer cores had returned. The core was being moved into the engineering bay for a diagnostic. The other two were on their way. The one in the frigate was too far gone to be of any use. If I recovered the data on the cores, I might be able to find out what kind of weapon that man, Entity, whatever it was, had used on the corvettes and hauler.


	3. Chapter 3

This Story is Rated M for Language, Violence, and suggestive themes. You have been notified, read at your own risk.

I do not own Fallout, Mass Effect, Rage, or any of the characters from said sources.

Exodus 3

The rift grew ever closer, all the while my speed increased, at first it would have taken hours. Now it will only be minutes now. The AI cores were still partially intact. Both were heavily damaged but both still functioned. At this point I have just given up on trying to escape and I'm now focusing on surviving the rift. I read some pretty interesting radiation profiles. The rift is creating radiation similar to a warp drive. The speed of which I was being pulled in suddenly increased by an order of magnitude, like overtaking a car on the highway.

The great golden glow of the rift grew bigger and bigger in my field of view, I could always switch to another camera but I wanted a courtside view for this. Just before I reached the rift I felt a great pain in my right side. Like part of me was being torn away. I immediately applied a patch that would numb the pain. I guess keeping a few of those with me turned out to be useful in the end. Soon, however the patch had no effect, as I was rapidly sinking into the sea of unconsciousness.

I saw bright flashes of worlds that I could barely comprehend, even in my wildest dreams. First, there was a fleet of monstrous ships that resembled a 'Squid', whatever that was, the word popping into my mind as I tried to understand the scene. These creatures were attacking a mass of substantially smaller vessels, and it appeared that they were winning. Then the scene zoomed in upon the structure they were fighting for. There was a single man, faced with a terrible choice. He fought with himself, each option with it own benefits, and its own destruction. This man chose the end the threat, even if that meant sacrificing himself and a great ally of his. The man was chosen to make the choice, and choose he did. But just after he chose to destroy, him and two other beings were visited. This visitor told them of another galaxy. One that needed help against a threat greater than the race he had labored so to defeat. All three chose to help.

The second vision brought me to a land of scorched earth and fallen empires. I saw one man choose to be the lynchpin in the fight against an oppressive regime. This man had lived through Apophis and would not go down so easily. He raised an army and liberated the wasteland he called home. He acted as first president of the new order and when his term ended he was approached by the same man that had found the savior in my last vision and given the same offer. It was accepted without hesitation.

Finally, I saw a land ravaged by war and great time ago, and the man who rebuilt it. A man out of time and out of his world. He lost his life and all he knew. He found a new purpose in protecting the people of this new world from themselves and others. He knew there were threats beyond what he could control. He decided to ready his people as best he could. One day he was approached by a man he knew nothing of. He was out on patrol with his wife and his friend, both of which helped him free the wasteland of his former home.

This last vision seemed to be the one that I entered. The man who destroyed my fleet rose up out of the rift in front of me. "Your friends were an unfortunate casualty, but acceptable losses. You are being sent to a world. The ancient enemy has risen once more. They are crusading again. You must stop them, there is a race that I very I'd much prefer to keep alive. You have to stop them from exterminating this race, Humans, they are called.

There are a few humasn in particular that I want you to meet. The first one is called The Courier, although he is known by many other names. They will assist you if they feel they must. You shall convince him of this, or you will die, lost forever to the ravages of time."

I felt as if this was some profound statement, but I didn't understand most of it. "What exactly does that mean? It all just sounded like a big collection of gibberish that I don't understand."

At this he seemed angered. In hindsight, that might have not been the best move. "I'll dumb it down for you. There is someone known as Colonel Jason McLean. You will put in orbit of his planet. Find him. Help him. You might not die if you do exactly what I am telling you to."

"I'm still confused but ok. I'll do that." I somewhat nervously replied once I thought he was done.

"Just shut up and go already, I'm done dealing with you." At this he began moving away "I hate mortals." He must have thought himself out of earshot, or just didn't care.

'What do I do now' I thought then the rift vanished from around me with the man moving farther away. I performed a scan of the space near me and found that almost all of my sensors had been either blinded or fried completely. The optical sensors could provide enough data to make an initial conclusion. The planet had been completely replaced with a new one. this planet was a green and blue planet of average size. There were four major landmasses.

Three of these continents had large settlements on them. These settlement had large amounts of radio traffic that I was only able to pick up because I had appeared on the edge of the atmosphere. I would be fine for now, but if I lost drive power I would have to make planetfall.

What my sensors didn't see was the large disk shaped ship in a higher orbit that I was. The only warning I had was a burst of radiation that I hadn't seen for centuries. This radiation preceded some kind of weapon shooting straight through the engineering deck, causing severe damage to both reactors as well as the drive and warp cores. I had taken the shields down earlier to save power. This was a mistake because I had forgotten to raise them and the auxillary reactor didn't have enough power for both the backup drive and shields. This was somewhat of an oversight in ship design, but I had no control over that at this point. I had to evade the ships next shot or raise the shields.

If I raised the shields then I would fall down to the planet. The emergency chemical thrusters would slow re-entry enough to make it survivable. But the ship would still require extensive repairs. Well, that would happen anyways, but being in orbit would make that significantly easier. However, if I decided to activate the drive then I would have a chance to escape, but if I got hit again then I would be dead in the water.

"Ah, whatever, I'm not dying today. Shields it is." And with that, I activated the shields,t hoping re-entry wouldn't cause too much damage.


End file.
